Monopolis
Monopolis is the twenty-first episode of the third season. Tagline Because of a shortage of resources of the Interstellar Concordium Pacification Army, the Tal Prai'ex has to be called in their place to look for a ship wreck. The Tal Prai'ex is ready for everything to save its crew, still alive... Summary Act One The ISC headquarters hail the Romulans and they inform them that there was a downed ship in the 83 Epsilon Crux system because all their ships are tied up. Relm has the ship fly to the 83 Epsilon Crux system and she got weighted during the trip. Once in the system, they found the hulk of a Lyran cargo cutter, containing Romulan ale. Also, while on orbit over the planet, they find cities and that they even used things like a television as the Vulcans used to watch 2,000 years ago. The television signals that they could get were those of a board game show in which the prize are the Lyrans. Act Two After scanning the hulk, Vaebn Mairex decides that the freighter can be repaired and he decides to have it repaired. Meanwhile, Neleras ponders whatever options are available to the crew: they can audition for the show, and Catherine (Giltia) asks the crew to see the game footage, recognizing it instantly as Monopoly. Because of it, they play a practice game of Monopoly with Neleras as the "Banker". Catherine and Annika are up to an auspicious start, while Damar gets "imprisoned" because of a bad chance card. Eight turns later, the game is at more or less a standstill but Neleras decides that the winner will audition. Act Three On the Lyran ship, the Romulans are repairing the warp core, but they had to bring a Mr. Fusion reactor to compensate for the lack of power to the ship. Rovas tried extracting the engineering knowledge from Brianna Reiss but failed. Vaebn finds that they used Romulan ale to power the ship. After cleaning the plasma conduits, they had the plasma intercooler replaced with a replicated part. However, their heat resulted in the Cardassian player filing for bankruptcy after falling on Iraq Place on a dice blunder. Shortly after, the Bajoran player files for bankruptcy as well, ending the game. Act Four After inspecting the game records of the two players that remained, Neleras went through the game records and it is found that Catherine is the winner. Also, on the cargo ship, they find an old student newspaper from the University of Montreal and they joked on it before the cutter could go to warp. Once it did, the trip was quite rough and they had the phase inducer replaced. Once beamed on Monopolis, Catherine was greeted by open arms by the production team, telling her about the format of the show. The show itself had four tiers of competition but the winner of each eights-of-final match could advance to the semifinals. Act Five After losing herself in the maze that is the television studios, Catherine Giltia finally gets to compete in the game and she is fourth in the playing order of the eights-of-final game due to her lack of chemical knowledge. She realized that their version of Monstropoly doesn't have a geopolitics theme, rather they have monsters from the legends instead. But even on the cutter, as it turned back, the crew onboard rooted for her, with Brianna at the helm. During the last turn of play, Catherine's odds were favorable and she could step on the Go space. After the game ends, Catherine is again declared the winner. Background Monstropoly, as depicted in the episode Monopolis, is actually a rough draft of a high-school project of the writer. It is a play on the words monstrosity and Monopoly, which is one of the primary themes of the episode. Also, the overseers of the Monstropoly show are the accounting cabinet Madoff and Associates, whose inspiration was, ironically, a real-world swindler called Bernard Madoff. Production notes The copy of the Gros Photon, the PHYSUM's student newspaper, depicted in this episode was later re-used in the episode Rode the 300 as part of the loot obtained in a raid on Du'Qot whose aim was to turn its population into zombies. External link *Monopolis on the RIS Bouteina boards Category:RIS Bouteina episodes